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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, doctor and author, was born at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, the youngest son of an alcoholic civil servant
of Irish extraction. Required to help support his family even as a medical student, he attended lectures given by the psychiatrist Dr Joseph Bell, which equipped him not only with unusual diagnostic skill but also an
uncanny ability to infer all manner of information about a persons life and character from observation of small, and to others insignificant details. It was just such powers of deduction that he conferred on the
resourceful hero of his ever popular detective yarns, the master sleuth Sherlock Holmes, who made his debut in 1887 in a short story, "A Study in Scarlet", published in Beaton's Christmas Annual. With the aid of the
steadfast companion and chronicler Conan Doyle so considerately provided for him - the physician Dr John H.Watson, late of her Majesty's armed forces - the gaunt but exceptionally fit Holmes with the brilliant intellect
and expert knowledge of chemistry, given to playing the violin and smoking pitfulls of cheap tobacco while pondering a difficult case, went on to solve one complicated mystery after another over the years. In 1882 Conan
Doyle took up medical practice in England while continuing to give his narrative talents in full rein in several novels.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 - 1930 |
